Mann in Court

Here is something I came across recently in the Courthouse News Service. After the abuse that this internationally recognized scientist has received from the anti-science movement, this seems (if anything) a little overdue!

VANCOUVER, B.C. (CN) – A Pennsylvania State University professor claims climate-change denier Timothy Ball defamed him in an interview published by the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, a Winnipeg-based think tank.

Michael Mann, a professor in Penn State’s meteorology department and director of the university’s Earth Systems Science Center, claims that Ball defamed him when he said that Mann “should be in the State Pen, not Penn State,” for his alleged role in the so-called climate gate email tussle.

Mann says that Ball and the Centre refused to issue an apology and published the words with the “purpose of harming the plaintiff and exposing him to hatred, ridicule and contempt, lowering the plaintiff in the estimation of others, and causing him to be shunned and avoided.”

It’s not the first time Ball’s been sued by a climate scientist for defamation.

In February, Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria sued Ball over an article published by the Canada Free Press, in which Ball allegedly accused Weaver of cherry-picking scientific data in his work with the UN’s intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.Mann seeks punitive damages and wants the article removed from its electronic database. He is represented in B.C. Supreme Court by Roger McConchie.

I think Muller’s statement, “Mike’s trick consisted of erasing that data, calling it unreliable, and then substituting the temperature data from thereon” and his claims that the raw data weren’t available to the public prior to “climategate” shows quite clearly that he hasn’t got the foggiest clue what he’s talking about, so why exactly should we care what he thinks of the situation?

The fact that he’s willing to accuse other scientists of wrongdoing based on a situation that he hasn’t taken the time to try to comprehend says a lot about his science and principles.

This is pretty typical I am afraid. One of the greatest struggles that science has right now is to how to engage with a debate where one side depends on the facts and the other on mythology and fundamentalist rhetoric. At some point, this has be taken to task, which is the point of the Mann court case. For too long, denialists and false sceptics supported by fossil fuel interests have got away with lies and deceit that have gone unpunished.

Ove – don’t come with an argument from Authority – as someone who has been supported with millions of tax payer funding over many years you’ve got a hide to accuse Steve McIntyre, who discovered the Mann “trick”, of big oil funding. He’s denied any such thing.

His exposure of Mann was not mythology or fundamentalist rhetoric – it was real science and if you can’t see the fraud then you haven’t been following it and aren’t qualified to comment.

In fact it’s highly likely that you are in receipt of big oil funding due to the donations to your University from Fossil Fuel companies!

McIntyre and Ross McKittrick were not out to victimise Michael Mann – they requested his data which is perfectly acceptable scientific practice – they became suspicious when Mann refused to pass it on. When he was eventually forced to produce it it was found to be faulty as Professor Muller points out clearly in the video I posted above.

Dr Judith Curry and the various leading scientists who regularly visit her blog also came to the obvious conclusion that Mann was corrupt because he was prepared to corrupt his science to reach his desired conclusion. Read the damn blog Ove – not one scientist is prepared to defend Mann in this regard. Maybe you should come forward and publish Mann’s defence – good luck.